June 11, 2007

Making Poverty Histo......

OK, so one of the things the Jeffrey Sachs initiative is trying to tell farmers in Africa is how to harvest and store hay. Mmmm hmm. It's a pretty basic technology, so why haven't they been doing it before?

It's hard for me to believe that no one has thought about cutting grass
and saving it. I'm sure they are uneducated but that's a pretty basic
idea for someone who lives off the land. Rather, it is probably very
difficult to save because of the lack of law and order, including the
ability to store things without theft, or have the right to then sell
them in a future drought (at, presumably, higher than-average prices).
Then again, if they really never have thought of cutting and saving
grass, they really have zero chance of becoming a modern society on
their own.

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Comments

Think of stored hay as Capital, and the typical African government as Socialist, and the upshot is clear.

Posted by: dearieme | Jun 11, 2007 1:56:24 PM

Now I don't know much about making hay...but I do recall that one only makes it when the sun shines. Otherwise it rots.

Now the Millenium Village is in Western Kenya, where it rains a helluvalot - and at the same time at which the grass grows.

So I suspect that the poor bloody locals will struggle to sell rotting grass and are well aware of it.

Also - Western Kenya is very heavily populated and not a great deal of land is given over to pasture.

So quite what is going on I don't know.

I suspect that some of this bad advice is that information doesn't move in Kenya very efficiently. What might the economic reasons be for this?

Tim adds: If the information flow is what is lacking, increase the information flow. By, for example, handing out mobile phones perhaps?

Posted by: Mark | Jun 11, 2007 5:01:42 PM

It rains? Make silage.

Posted by: dearieme | Jun 11, 2007 7:13:24 PM

There are particular techniques - technologies, if you will - for growing, harvesting and storing hay in the best way, and I suppose it is these techniques which the Sachs crowd are imparting - transferring, if you like - to the local farmers. We could call this process 'technology transfer'. It's a good thing. And since African farmers are well acquainted with the concept and practice of storing things, the need for technology transfer seems a more plausible explanation than the idea that The Evil Dictators who rule the whole continent of Africa in your imagination simply nick everything.